


Nothing But Shapes and Variations in the Structure of Space

by merriman



Category: Killjoys (TV), Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Clones, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:10:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8166328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Dutch, Johnny and D'avin take on a new warrant: Find Dr. Cosima Niehaus, who has disappeared with some top secret Company tech.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



> This takes place some time mid-season 1 of Killjoys, after D'av joins the team, but before things get too complicated with Khlyen.
> 
> Consider this somewhere between a crossover and a fusion - The Orphan Black characters exist in the Killjoys universe, but not as replacements for Killjoys characters.
> 
> I didn't tag for major character death, because no major characters die. One minor character does, however, though she also died in Orphan Black already.
> 
> The title is a quote (in keeping with Orphan Black's episode titling scheme) from Erwin Schrodinger.
> 
> Thank you to A for beta and T for letting me hash this all out even though he knew nothing about Orphan Black.

"This should be an easy job, even for a level 4 warrant," Bellus told them, handing them the files. "Some scientist, she's probably harmless. Toughest part'll be finding her."

It had been a slow couple of weeks following a hard couple of days. Their last job had been a rough one, resulting in a dent on Lucy's hull, a ridiculous amount of wasted ammo, and both Dutch and Johnny needing new coats. Sure, it had paid well, but they'd all been glad of some time to relax after. Eventually, however, even Pree had been sick of them, so off they'd gone to get a new bounty.

Dutch looked through the dossier on their quarry. "Stealing Company tech," she read out. "This wouldn't be the sort of tech that could blow us up, would it?"

"She's a biologist," Johnny pointed out, also reading the dossier.

"Even worse," Dutch muttered. "It could get us all deathly ill."

Bellus was shaking her head. "Take it or leave it, kids. Everything else is piffle, not worth your time."

"What do you think, boys?" Dutch asked them. "Rogue scientist or pickpockets?"

D'av and Johnny glanced at each other for a moment, sharing some sort of brotherly look, then nodded at the same time. "Scientist."

"Done," Bellus said. "Go get her, kids."

Back on Lucy, they all pulled up the full files on their bounty: Cosima Niehaus, Company-employed biologist, missing for two days and believed to be in possession of some top secret Company research prototype. The nature of the prototype was not included in the files provided, which was more than a little disconcerting to them all.

"What if it is a biohazard?" D'av asked. "Do we have the gear to go after someone who might be carrying, like, a virus or something?"

"We should?" Johnny said, scrolling through a list of the hazmat gear they had in storage. "I guess it depends on how it's spread."

Dutch was more interested in figuring out just where their quarry was. She'd been in a lab orbiting Westerley, but had disappeared two days earlier. So they had a couple of options: They could go to the lab and ask around. They could check to see what ships, if any, had docked there between when Niehaus was last seen and when someone had noticed her gone. Two days was enough time for her to have gotten pretty far. Depending on who she ran into and how resourceful she was, she could be out of the Quad by now. Where she went would depend on what sort of person she was and what it was that she'd taken. So. Both.

"Lab first," Dutch announced. "We can worry about hazmat suits later. Someone there is bound to be able to tell us if we'll need them."

*******

The lab was all pristine white and grey furniture and glass walls and Dutch could tell that having three Killjoys there was making everyone who could see them incredibly nervous. A receptionist had paged three different people, speaking in increasingly placating tones before turning back to tell them that one of Dr. Niehaus' coworkers would be out to speak to them shortly. Said coworker turned out to be an anxious looking young man who simply introduced himself as Scott and led them to a conference room.

"So, look," Scott said once the door was shut. "All I know is that Cosima was working on something on the side? She didn't tell me much about it, but she'd been staying late most nights. I mean. We live here? But she was staying late in the lab. I figured she must have clearance to do that. They monitor all of it. I guess somehow she got around that. She's in big trouble, huh?"

Johnny nodded. "Once you've got Killjoys coming looking for you, generally that's a yes."

Dutch shot him a glare, then turned her attention back to Scott.

"So, Scott, do you know if she had any friends she'd go to? Or ties to other places?"

Scott was clearly trying _not_ to glance nervously at D'avin, who had been silently standing by the door, hand on his gun, the whole time. It was a technique they'd found often produced good results when they needed to ask questions.

"I think her sister, Beth, lives on Westerley?" Scott said, eyes fixed very firmly on Dutch. "Pretty sure it's her twin sister. I walked in on a call she made once. Mostly she keeps to herself. She was close to Dr. Cormier, but she got promoted to some fancy lab orbiting Qresh about a month ago."

"Thank you, Scott," Dutch said, standing and nodding to D'av and Johnny. "Come on, boys. Let's go hit Westerley and see if we can find this twin sister."

*******

As it turned out, the search for Beth Niehaus was a dead end because there was no Beth Niehaus on Westerley. Or on Leith. Or Qresh - at least as far as they could dig. What there was, was a Beth Childs, working for Company Security on Westerley. And her face sure as hell looked like the ID photo they'd been given with Cosima Niehaus' dossier. Conveniently, she'd just been transferred to Old Town, which meant they all stopped and grabbed a drink at the Royale before breaking it to the local Security office that Killjoys were looking for one of theirs.

"So, what's the job?" Pree asked once they were all served.

"Runaway scientist," Johnny told him. "We were _told_ it would be an easy job, but she's gone off the grid."

"And could be halfway to another system by now," Pree noted. He leaned against the bar, tapping his fingers on it as he thought. "Except she'd need someone to take her."

"Right," Dutch agreed. "So we're going to find her sister and see what we can shake out of her."

"Except her sister is Company Security," D'av added. "So it might get a little…"

"Complicated?" Pree offered.

"Messy," Dutch muttered.

Pree just shook his head. "Not in the bar, please!" he called to them as he went to help someone else.

"So do we just walk up to one of the officers and tell them 'Hey, we need to talk to Beth Childs?'" D'avin asked them once Pree was busy.

Johnny and Dutch both sighed. "We could," Dutch said after a moment.

"But they're kind of sensitive about that sort of thing? We try not to do it," Johnny explained. "I mean, technically they should want us to be able to just do our jobs, but they close ranks if we come on too strong."

"So we'll just have to make it clear that we're not looking _for_ Beth. We're just looking for someone Beth might know."

"Her twin sister."

"No reason to spread it around," Dutch pointed out. "Once someone's pointed us in her direction we can ask her all we want about Dr. Niehaus."

*******

Unfortunately, no one could point them in Beth Childs' direction because Beth Childs was dead.

"Overdosed on Jakk," one of the other officers, Angie, told Dutch. "She'd been kinda flaky lately. Late all the time, forgetting things that just happened. And then there was that incident…"

Dutch gave Angie a look and motioned for her to continue. Johnny and D'avin were talking to other officers but it seemed Dutch had gotten lucky and snagged one who was willing to spill. 

"So this isn't about the woman she shot?" Angie shook her head. "Man, what had she been up to? I'm telling you, something was going on with her. I swear she used to be really good, but she'd been slipping. She shot this woman, and it got all hushed up. I figured someone would come looking for her, but then she took herself out."

"No, actually, we're looking for her sister," Dutch said. Now she had this woman's number. Wannabe Killjoy who hadn't gotten up the guts to apply.

"Sister?" Angie frowned. "She never mentioned a sister. She told me she was an only child."

Dutch pulled up the picture of Dr. Niehaus in the dossier and showed it to Angie. "That's who we're looking for."

"Woah." Angie stared at the picture for a moment. "No way they're not related. But seriously, Beth told me once. I was telling her about my brother's kids and she said she couldn't handle having nieces or nephews, but it didn't matter because she didn't have any siblings. She didn't even talk about her parents. I told her one time it was like she was grown in a tube or something. She almost decked me."

Angie was moving now and Dutch followed her as she sat down at a terminal. "So, don't ask me how I know her password, but here's her stuff."

Dutch watched as Angie logged in. "I never ask that sort of question," she assured the other woman. "You've been very helpful." Not that Johnny likely would have found it too difficult to get into the system, but this did save them the time.

Angie got up and smiled at her. "Always happy to help the RAC," she told Dutch before walking away.

Dutch caught Johnny's eye and motioned for him to join her. "My new friend there just handed us Beth Childs' terminal entries," she told him. "Mind grabbing all of that so we can dig into it on Lucy?"

"Your wish is my command," Johnny said, slipping into the seat Angie had vacated and quickly going to work. "Hey, Dutch?" he said a moment later as D'avin joined them. "Am I right in thinking you want me to grab the hidden stuff too?"

"You know me so well," Dutch said. "Get it all."

*******

It took Johnny (and Lucy) two hours to decrypt the hidden files from Beth Childs' terminal. When they finished what they'd found were about six months' worth of communication between Childs and several other women: Alison Hendrix on Leith, Katja Obinger on the other side of Westerley, the elusive Cosima Niehaus on the research station, then one named MK with no identifiable location, and finally the newest contact, about a month old: Sarah Manning. A little digging told them that Hendrix and Obinger were both apparently deceased, MK was an utter cipher, and Sarah Manning hadn't even been in the Quad until a month earlier.

"Who the hell are all these women?" D'avin asked, looking through the logs of calls made back and forth between Childs and Hendrix, then Childs and Obinger. 

"I don't have a clue," Dutch admitted. "But somehow I don't think the Company necessarily wanted us to find them all."

"Well, it looks like if we're going to find Dr. Niehaus, we might have to find at least one of them," Johnny said as he pulled up a log of a conversation between Childs, Niehaus, and Manning. "This is from two days ago," he told them. "And Lucy found out where it came from."

"Yes I did, John," Lucy informed them. "The signal for Sarah Manning's communication comes from the Badlands. Shall I set the coordinates?"

"Yes, please, Lucy," Dutch said. "Right, boys. Let's go find these ladies and see what they're up to."

*******

"I thought this was supposed to be an easy job!" D'avin yelled to Dutch as a shot rang out. The coordinates Lucy brought them to had turned out to be an old ore processing facility, long since looted and left empty. Except that someone had barricaded off the lower levels, sealing them from the outside. And someone else had been keeping watch and was now firing on them.

"I'll add hazard pay to our requests!" Dutch called back. She peered out from her cover and caught a quick glimpse of a yellow robe. Curiouser and curiouser. Nothing they'd found had suggested any of the women Childs had been talking to were Scarbacks, but then nothing in this job had turned out to be predictable so far.

One last shot came their way, then nothing. Just the wind outside the facility above them and the sounds of an old metal building settling. Dutch peeked out again and saw no one but D'avin taking cover nearby. She didn't see Johnny, but he was probably just out of sight.

Or not.

"Hands up," a voice said from behind her. "We've already got one of you, and there's three of us to the two of you left. Gun on the ground, please. We'll take excellent care of it."

Dutch slowly lowered her gun to the floor and heard someone behind her pick it up. "I don't suppose you folks know where Cosima Niehaus is, do you?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, we do," said another voice from behind her. "What we don't know is why you care."

"Killjoys," Dutch said. "I'd show you my badge but I don't want you getting any ideas. There's a warrant for Dr. Niehaus. Stealing Company property."

Both women behind them laughed dryly. "Yeah," said the second one. "I guess she did that, yeah, S?"

The owner of the first voice was frisking Dutch, finding her second gun and taking that too. "Yep, I suppose she did at that," she agreed. Now both came around into view and Dutch could see that one of the women shared a face with Dr. Niehaus and Beth Childs. Unless she was one of them. S was an older woman, maybe in her 40s or 50s, handling a gun like she'd grown up with one in her hands. The Scarback, whoever they were, was nowhere to be seen.

The older woman had found Dutch's badge and was inspecting it when a comm chirped and the younger woman answered it.

"Yeah. Me'n S have 'em. They say they're Killjoys."

"They are," the older woman told her. "At least this one is. Fair chance the others are too."

"S says they are, yeah." A pause, during which the younger woman rolled her eyes and gained a truly put-upon look on her face. "Well what do you want me to do about it? They're here, yeah? They've got a warrant for Cosima. We're fucked."

Another pause, then a heavy sigh, then the younger woman handed the comm to the older woman, who took it without breaking her concentration on Dutch.

"Love, we're not fucked," she said calmly to whoever was on the other end. "We can sort this out one way or another. I know this type. Trust me. I'm bringing them down."

*******

The facility went a lot deeper than Dutch had expected. They ended up going down in a lift that she never would have risked had she been given a choice. When they reached the bottom she could see the Scarback up ahead of them in the passage, hood still up and Johnny over their shoulder.

Dutch and D'avin were walking ahead of the two women who'd found them and D'av leaned in to whisper "What do you get if you combine a Scarback, Company Security, a Company scientist and two mercs?"

Dutch allowed herself a tiny smile. "What?" she asked him.

"Whatever the hell mess we're in right now," he told her. Behind them, Dutch was fairly certain she heard one of the women snicker.

The passage they were in ended in a large well-lit room that was surprisingly clean. Plastic sheeting sealed off a third of the space. The rest appeared to be a combination of living areas and lab equipment. A woman got up from a seat nearby and came to meet them. As she approached, Dutch could see that she looked almost exactly like the younger woman accompanying them. It was a little eerie. She'd met identical twins before, but this wasn't quite that, somehow.

"Beth Childs," the woman approaching them said. She did not offer her hand. "Looks like you cracked my terminal, so let's skip the bullshit. You know who we are. That's Sarah Manning there, and Cosima Niehaus will be out any minute. Siobhan Sadler here has been keeping an eye out for folks just like you. Seems she has some inside knowledge."

S for Sadler. Dutch glanced behind her at the older woman. She'd never met Sadler, but her name still popped up in Killjoy gossip every so often. She'd been a Level 5, top of her game, then she'd retired. Gone out on a big job and taken her pay out of the system. Rumors abounded, that she'd been paid off by someone, that she'd pissed someone off, that she'd fallen in love, that she'd actually become a Level 6. But here she was. A retired Killjoy babysitting a set of identical triplets. Or whatever. Whatever was seeming more and more likely.

"Dutch," Sadler said. "I've heard your name over the wires a few times. I keep my ears open for news from the Quad. And see, I think maybe you might see things a little different once you know what's going on."

"We can trust her?" Beth asked. 

Sadler shrugged. "If we can't, we leave them here and head to the next safe house. It's ready when we need it."

"Jen won't last the trip," Sarah muttered. "She's pretty bad, S."

"Love, Jen might not last the night _here_ ," Sadler said, not unkindly. Sarah glared at her and headed away towards a corner that had been curtained off. 

"What, exactly _is_ going on?" Dutch asked, turning to look at Sadler full on. "Our warrent's just for Dr. Niehaus, but if you've all been helping her, it's only a matter of time before the Company comes after all of you."

"It helps that the Company thinks most of the rest are dead," said a voice from behind Dutch. She turned again to see Dr. Niehaus, who was most definitely cut from the same cloth as Beth and Sarah. "Well, dead, or not involved in the first place. Didn't really have time to set up my death. I had to get out fast."

Cosima Niehaus did differ a bit from the other two - her hair was curly and braided and she wore glasses, but the face was still the same. She motioned for Dutch and D'avin to follow her. "Don't worry about your third partner. He's just knocked out. We've got him in a bed."

She led them down towards the plastic sheeting and peeled a panel away so they could enter. Inside was what looked like a miniature and somewhat basic hospital wing. Several beds sat in a row along the wall, with various machines and equipment hooked up nearby. Johnny was out cold in the first bed, but two of the other beds held women. Women who looked like just like Niehaus. And Manning. And Childs. 

"Jennifer Fitzsimmons. Katja Obinger," Cosima said, by way of introduction. Obinger, whose bright pink hair made her pale skin look even more sickly than it would have otherwise, gave them a sullen nod. Fitzsimmons was only barely awake and raised one hand to wave weakly. She had an oxygen mask on and seemed to be having trouble breathing.

"We've got a couple more here, but they're not sick. Not yet," Cosima told them. "We all get sick. We all die. We lost Janika last month. I got sick a few days ago. It's why I left the lab."

Dutch and D'avin both looked around, taking in the medical equipment, the women in the beds, the woman in front of them. A groan from the bed behind them called their attention to Johnny, who was just now sitting up.

"Guys?" he said as he looked over at them. "We're just looking for one Dr. Niehaus, right? Not three? Because I could swear there are three. Maybe four if you count the one I saw earlier. Just how hard did she hit me?"

D'av went to help Johnny up as Dr. Niehaus went to check him.

"We're clones," Cosima told them as she looked at Johnny's pupils. "One of the arms of the Company made us, then sent us out into the Quad to live out our lives. And die. It's pretty horrible."

"Isn't that… Don't they actually have a bylaw saying they can't do that?" Johnny asked. "I could have sworn that's a thing. Otherwise they'd just be cloning up miners."

"Seems like someone decided to try it anyhow," a voice said from the opening to the medical area. Beth stood there, arms crossed over her chest. "Cause here we all are. We've found a whole load so far. You'd think someone'd notice, but no one has, except us. Every time we find one, we set up a death, then bring her here. We've been too late a couple of times. If they know we're sick, they take us away to some lab orbiting Qresh. We missed Aryanna by a matter of hours. Tony wouldn't come with us and now…" Beth sighed.

"The warrant says you stole Company tech," Dutch said to Cosima. 

"Well, I _am_ Company tech," Cosima pointed out. "Just not tech they want walking around unmonitored. I wasn't about to let them just come and take me to study."

"How do you know they're not, you know, taking care of you?" D'avin asked. Of course he knew that wasn't how the Company operated, but it was still a valid question. How did they know, beyond just knowing the Company?

"We've got someone inside," Cosima told them. "A friend of mine. We've got friends all over the place. Beth's former partner told us you were talking to Company Security this morning. A friend of Sarah's saw you at the Royale."

Johnny frowned. "And there's that Scarback. The one who knocked me out. Scarbacks are everywhere."

"That's Helena. She's not really a people person," Beth explained. "Look. All we want is to figure out what it is that's killing us, then live our lives like normal. We're people, even if the Company thinks we're property."

Dutch frowned and glanced at Johnny, then D'avin. They both gave almost imperceptible nods. Beth was walking over to Cosima, so Dutch shifted to face them both.

"I think maybe we need to have a little conference, just us Killjoys," she told the two clones. "Figure out what to do about this whole warrant situation."

"Funny," Beth said. "We were going to discuss the same thing, just us clones."

"Fine," Dutch said.

"Fine," Beth replied.

Cosima groaned. "Oh my god, law enforcement. You guys would totally be best buds if not for this mess. You three can use my bedroom to talk. It's the one with the purple blanket on the bed. Helena's keeping an eye out for you so. You know. Don't piss her off."

"Not planning on it," Johnny assured her.

One of the sick clones, Fitzsimmons, Dutch was pretty sure, was waving to Beth and Cosima, who headed over to her as Sadler appeared in the entry to the hospital wing.

"We've got a cot one of you can use. Come on."

*******

Sitting in Cosima's bedroom, Dutch considered what they'd seen in the clones' hideout. Sadler had explained as they walked that it wasn't just the cloned women at stake. Two of them had children, one had brought her husband with her. Sadler herself had raised Sarah, well out of the sight of the Company, who apparently thought both Sarah and Helena had died as infants during the raid on Sugar Point.

"This isn't precisely what we signed up for," Johnny pointed out once they were alone - though Dutch didn't discount the possibility that they were being listened to. "I mean, the warrant is all, yeah, but the warrant is for a scientist with stolen property. Not a scientist who _is _stolen property."__

__D'avin was looking through the dossier and warrant. "There's nothing in here about indentured servitude or slavery," he told them. "I mean, not that the Company's above that sort of thing, obviously, but don't they have to declare it? They can't just own someone with no contract or consent."_ _

__"Not in the Quad," Dutch clarified. "Outside? Maybe. They've got all sorts of gray areas. This, though, none of it's official. None of it's in the warrant, none of it's technically allowed. But we took the warrant. We've got to fill it somehow."_ _

__Johnny heaved a heavy sigh and flopped back onto Cosima's bed to stare up at the canopy hung above it. "So we're stuck. I don't like this, Dutch. The Company's playing fast and loose with the rules, setting us up."_ _

__"I agree, it stinks," Dutch told him. "But it is what is is. We've got to find a way to fulfill the contract or renege and deal with the aftermath. I've _never_ reneged on a contract."_ _

__"Well, we're outnumbered, probably outgunned, and we'd basically be participating in illegal human experimentation and slavery," D'avin said. He smiled at Dutch and Johnny. "Have I mentioned how glad I am that I joined the RAC? It's so simple and straightforward!"_ _

__Johnny threw a pillow at him. D'avin caught it and threw it back. It might have turned into a full scale pillow war, had Siobhan Sadler not opened the door and walked in. Johnny caught himself mid-throw, quickly tucking the pillow behind his back._ _

__"What level's the warrant?" Sadler asked them. "It's important that we know."_ _

__Dutch looked at Johnny, who shrugged. "Might as well tell her," he said._ _

__"Level 4," Dutch said. "But we never kill on a 4. Point of honor."_ _

__"You won't have to," Sadler told them. "We've got a plan for you lot. None of us like it, but it should keep us all out of trouble for long enough that you get your warrant filled and we get out of the Quad."__

 _ _ *******__

 _ _Jennifer Fitzsimmons looked like a Jakk addict in severe withdrawal. Her curly brown hair was lank and soaked with sweat. Her eyes were sunken and red from the effort of coughing. They had her propped up in her hospital bed while the clones and Killjoys gathered around._ _

__"I'm not going to make it to the next safe house and we all know it," she whispered hoarsely. The illness that seemed to be claiming clone after clone was in the lungs, eventually making breathing impossible. Jennifer coughed a few times, then tried to take as deep a breath as she could._ _

__"I'll never last long enough for Cosima to find a cure."_ _

__Cosima was standing next to the bed, holding Jennifer's hand. She kept glancing at a machine nearby showing Jennifer's oxygen levels. "I wish I could have worked faster," she muttered._ _

__"Me too," Jennifer told her. "But if I've got to die, I want it to matter. I don't want to just go out on a ship while we run. Let it mean something, okay?"_ _

__"Mean what, precisely?" Dutch asked._ _

__The assembled clones - the ones they'd met as well as the Scarback and a prim-looking one Sadler had identified as Alison Hendrix - all turned to look at her. It was unnerving, having all those identical faces staring at her, but Dutch had faced down more intimidating groups in the past._ _

__"Our safety," Beth told Dutch. "Jen's asked us to take her off the oxygen. We'll braid up her hair, leave her with a pair of Cosima's glasses, she'll be close enough for _you_ to claim you believe her to be Dr. Cosima Niehaus. You're not supposed to know about the rest of us anyhow. So you happen upon this place and oh hey, looks like someone was here, but the only person left is this poor sick woman who looks like the doctor you've been sent to find. You ask her what her name is and she tells you she's Cosima. Then she's gone. No one for the Company to question."_ _

__"And they can't admit that she's a clone," Johnny added, nodding. "Level 4, Dutch. Dead or alive, still counts as fulfilled."_ _

__Dutch looked at the woman in the bed. Yes, her face was identical to the others' but she was the only one who could do this. And now that she could see them all together, they had their differences. Sarah's hair was wild but not curled. Allison's was pin-straight. Helena stood awkwardly, chewing on her lower lip. Beth stood at parade rest, waiting for Dutch's response. Jennifer was looking back at her, meeting her gaze._ _

__"We'll do it," Dutch said finally. "Thank you, Jennifer. This wasn't a warrant we would have enjoyed serving, no matter what."_ _

__"You might have been able to void it," Sadler told them. "But that would have meant telling the Company bigwig who issued it that you know about the clones. And that puts you three in as much danger as us. More, because they don't need you for whatever research they're doing."_ _

__"I thought of that," Dutch sighed. "I'd rather not get myself or my partners killed for this job. Believe me, it's not that big a pay out."__

 _ _ *******__

 _ _It was a long night for everyone. Dutch, Johnny, and D'avin spent it in Cosima's room, going over the story they'd tell when they'd inevitably be asked what had happened. From what Dutch could tell, the clones were taking turns packing up and sitting vigil with Jennifer Fitzsimmons, who'd been taken off the supplemental oxygen. Siobhan Sadler and Alison Hendrix's husband had the three children helping them pack. It was all a remarkably efficient operation and Dutch wondered how many times they'd done it already. How many clones they'd found and lost so far. The Company had to suspect something was going on by now, but they had to keep it quiet. Still, Dutch figured it was only a matter of time before they rounded up the rest before this little crew could get to them. Or maybe the illness was purposeful, meant to give the clones a limited lifespan. Planned obsolescence._ _

__At around 5 in the morning, Sarah came to find them._ _

__"She's gone," she told them. "We just need to pack up the rest of the medial supplies we're keeping. Give us an hour before you take her, yeah? S has a friend coming to get us, take us out of the Quad."_ _

__Sarah turned to leave and was replaced by Beth, who held a hand out to Dutch._ _

__"I thought about applying to the RAC, maybe a year ago. Before all this landed in my lap," she said as Dutch shook her hand. Beth had a good grip, strong and steady. "Never got around to it."_ _

__"I don't know that you'd have liked it. Not much room for family, outside the other agents and your team," Dutch told her._ _

__"Yeah, never figured myself for a family sort of gal," Beth said. "But here I am. You three take care of Jen between here and the Company. She made a hell of a sacrifice."_ _

__Dutch nodded and let go of Beth's hand. They left Cosima's room and found the rest of the place stripped bare. Beth was packing up Cosima's things, already making her room as empty as the others._ _

__Behind the plastic sheeting the only thing left was the bed holding the body of Jennifer Fitzsimmons. Someone had pulled her hair into a close approximation of Cosima's. A pair of Cosima's glasses sat on a tray attached to the bed. Dutch knew that a genetic test of Fitzsimmons to verify the warrant would work just fine. They had their target, or at least as close as they were going to get._ _

__When the group left, Dutch started a timer. She gave them a whole hour and a half, then made the call that they'd served the warrant on Dr. Cosima Niehaus, deceased. A few moments later she was given instructions on how to deliver the body. They did it all by the book, going to the coordinates provided, sealing the body into a bag and wheeling it into the airlock of a lab orbiting Qresh. A woman met them on the other side, introducing herself as Dr. Delphine Cormier. They didn't exchange pleasantries, just delivered the body into her care, then had her sign off on the warrant as an agent of the issuer._ _

__Only later, when they were far off from Qresh, Lucy orbiting Westerley and their payment safely deposited, did Dutch have Johnny (and Lucy) dig to find out who in the Company had issued the warrant. They weren't really supposed to know, not if the issuer didn't name themselves outright, but Dutch had always liked to have as much information as possible for the future._ _

__"Looks like it's a branch of the Company called Dyad?" Johnny said. "Warrant issued by one of their VPs…" He pulled up a picture of the VP in question and they all stared at it on Lucy's screen. "Rachel Duncan," Johnny read from the file. No doubt about it. She was a clone._ _


End file.
